Tuesday, December 17, 2013

"White Ranunculus" by Jonathan Aller

Hi everyone, it has been a long time since I posted especially an alla prima painting. This year has been a whirl wind for me, an amazing year to say the least. After the wedding this summer I dived into several commission projects, one of them I was able to share on the previous post. A long with working on those projects we have become new home owners! I still cannot wrap my mind around it. A little scary but amazing to own our own home. I know thanksgiving is long passed but I have many things to be thankful. I could not have dreamed for such an amazing year and what it's still surprising us with. I wanted to thank you guys as well for still reading my blog, even though this passed year I have been very limited on how much I have posted. I swear when I say I'm trying to get better in posting regularly, it's hard to post about painting walls when all I want to do is paint on canvas.

I've stated in previous post I was not going to paint alla prima paintings for a long time, well, long time has definitely passed. I really do miss doing these little guys. They are equivalent to sketching in your sketchbook when practicing. I have not painted in a while do to the move and we are still getting situated in our new home. Painting this alla prima gets the blood flowing again, gets my routine going with painting. I will never stop doing these alls prima's for that reason a lone, it allows me to always practice fine tuning my craft, which I think we should always keep doing as artist. This painting is the first painting to be done in my new studio, fitting to say the least. I did not want to just post the finishing painting, I miss explaining my process. It's always beneficial to share your process no matter what your style is, there's always going to be someone out there that will benefit from it.

I started with a dry brush and raw umber for the drawing stage. In this stage I like to keep the drawing simple and clear. Not worried about details, just concerned with placement and proportions.

I then fill in the basic colors for all the sections of the painting, this is the only stage I work everything at the same time. I do this to get the overall tone of the painting from the get go. I work with big form modeling at this stage as well. The point of big form modeling is to state how the lights and basic color note wraps around the form. The colors I use is naples yellow, raw umber, viridian, cerulean blue, cadmium yellow.

I know all my shapes are not final when I move on, I like to have the freedom to be able to move things if I need to. Now I start concentrating one section at a time. After big form modeling is complete I start with small for modeling in the darks. I start with the left side of the flowers, first by stating the middle to darker tones. I do not like to state the darkest darks first, I like to slowly move into them by starting with a middle tone. I am using the same colors as I did in the previous step. The good thing about this method is that you'r painting wet into wet, the tricky part is to not get to muddy or thick quickly.

Once the smaller forms for the darks are complete I move onto the lights. I like to jump between those two stages to get to the right look I'm going for.

I repeat the same process with the right half of the flowers. First by stating the darker smaller forms. An important thing to understand with smaller forms, they can only exist if the big form modeling is done correctly. Small form modeling is the icing on the cake, all your work is mostly done with big form modeling. A lot of people like to jump straight into small form modeling or the "details" instead of concentrating on big form modeling. Big form modeling stage is extremely important to get right, it's the stage where you have to make the lights believable.

After I worked with smaller form modeling of the lights I moved onto the vase and vines. I apologize for not showing more process from that point. I essentially repeated the same process what I did with the flowers. I changed the vase to fit better with the overall composition. After the vase was established I went back into the flowers and brought out the lights and darks more. I keep tweaking sections that have changed by values I established in other areas. I constantly walk back forth from the painting, especially towards the end. The painting looks much different when standing back, I never judge my values and chromas from up close, always by standing back. I could keep working on this painting, but I have to stop, especially when I feel it served its purpose.

Thank you again everyone for tuning in and interested in seeing my paintings. I appreciate all the support. I hope you guys enjoyed this one, see you guys soon!